Jules rolls her eyes as she comes to a stop in front of me. “What are you doing here?”

“Joining you for lunch,” I tell her as I stand up. “Although I was joking about sharing your sandwich with me. I’m going to go work out after this and I ate a late breakfast.”

I don’t tell her that included a stop through McDonald’s whereby I bought three sausage biscuits. I don’t tell her this because I figure someday she will meet Vale and I can’t be sure Jules wouldn’t rat my bad eating habits out.

“I don’t know whether to be pleased or mildly annoyed at you just assuming I’d want to eat lunch with you,” she says with teasing eyes before turning to head toward the lobby doors.

“You’re totally pleased,” I tell her as I follow her out.

“Totally annoyed,” she counters.

I don’t say anything else, but take the opportunity to appreciate her fine ass as she walks in front of me, leading me toward the bench she was on last week. I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but it seems she’s walking with more of a bounce in her step. I’m not egotistical enough to think that has anything to do with me, but I hope it has everything to do with the fact that she got some good rest last night.

I notice that today there are a few residents enjoying the courtyard, either sitting on other benches or sitting with their wheelchairs facing each other in conversation. Jules waves to a few as she passes by and then plops down on the bench.

I hope it doesn’t annoy her, but I sit down close to her.

And I mean close.

As in the side of my thigh pressed against hers.

I wait to see what she’ll do, which I figure could range anywhere from a slap to just a subtle movement away from me. She shocks me when she does neither, but instead sort of bumps her shoulder against me playfully while she pulls her sandwich out of the bag and says, “Seriously. What are you doing here?”

“Can’t I just come see you because I want to see you?” I ask her with my head tilted her way.

She grins as she unwraps her sandwich, her focus on that rather than me, but it’s me she talks to. “Well, of course you can. But you look like a man on a mission. Maybe a man that is holding in some delicious little secret.”

I grin down at her, watching as those delicate fingers unwrap what appears to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With her eyebrows drawn inward in concentration, she carefully pulls the sandwich apart and, while not the neatest thing in the world, manages to split it almost equally in half.

She looks up at me with a soft smile and holds one half of the sandwich to me. “It’s PB and J.”

I’m not hungry in the slightest because, hello—three sausage biscuits—but I can’t help but want to take the overture, because Jules is the one offering it to me. She’s sharing her lunch with me, which is too paltry to begin with, and it represents in one classic, unselfish move the core of her nature.

Instead of reaching for the sandwich, I tilt my head in toward hers and tell her as honestly as I can, “I really want to kiss you right now but I don’t want the first time to be here at your place of work and in front of these elderly people. I’m not sure their hearts could handle the way I want to kiss you right now.”

Jules’ eyes get as big as saucers and she whispers, “Oh.”

She’s still holding her sandwich out to me, which is utterly fucking adorable, and although I want to kiss her, I truly don’t want to do it in this setting. So I touch my fingers to her wrist and push the sandwich back her way. “Not hungry, Jules.”

“But you want to kiss me,” she mumbles.

“Pretty much,” I tell her candidly. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Pretty much,” she agrees softly.

“Fuck,” I mutter, turning my head in the opposite direction, taking in the fact there are five people in the courtyard with us, four of whom look to be about a bazillion years old. We better not risk it.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back to her. Her eyes are sparkling and her lips turned upward slightly, but when she takes in my disgruntled look, she grins at me big. Then she takes a bite of her sandwich and chews through her smile, still staring at me.

“Tonight,” I promise her. “First moment you’re alone at the convenience store . . . I’m kissing you.”

Still bearing an amused smile, she nods, swallows, and then asks, “But seriously . . . why are you here?”

My whole body actually jerks as I remember that I did in fact have a reason for coming here and it wasn’t to kiss her. Not that I haven’t been thinking about that a lot, but my purpose in coming here was for something entirely different.

I lean to the side so I can assess my back pocket and pull out the folded check I had put there less than an hour ago, after Stevie handed it to me. I hand it to Jules, who sets her sandwich down on her lap and hesitantly takes it from me.

“What’s this?” she asks, her gaze curious but wary.

I nod toward the paper in her hand. “Open it.”

She does so, eyes dropping down, and she gives a slight frown as she takes it all in. Then her head is snapping up, her frown deepens and she says, “I don’t understand.”

“I took your paintings to my friend Stevie’s flower shop. He loved them so much, he bought them outright for two hundred dollars each.”

She looks back down to the check, which is for a thousand dollars, since there were five total paintings, then back up to me. “Do you know what I could do with this type of money?”

“Get your TV fixed for one,” I say with a grin, but I know that is too frivolous for Jules to even care about.

She elbows me in the ribs playfully, but then looks back down to the check. “I can buy the kids new clothes. Not thrift store shit. And good shoes, you know? Kids’ shoes are so expensive. And toys . . . they don’t have much. I could even afford to enroll them in some extracurricular activities.”

I swallow hard, touched not even the word I’d use to describe my feeling right now. I believe that I could sit here for hours and stare at Jules staring at that check in wonder, and figure all was right in my world.

And when she finally looks back up at me, eyes a little moist, her voice gives her feelings away when it cracks with emotion and she says, “You don’t know what this means to me.”